Liveblogging the Iowa Caucuses

5:15 PM: Looks like a real barnburner! Tammy set up the living room for the GOP and put card tables in the basement for the Democrats. Be right back, I gotta go to Hy Vee for sandwich platter and Old Milwaukee.

5:40 PM: Goddamn, the lines at Hy Vee were a zoo. Chris Matthews was there with his stupid MSNBC entourage and they cut in front of me at the 15 items or less line with a cart full of bottled water and takeout salads which he forgot to write down the weight. Then he starts asking the cashier if the salad bar is organic, and then he didn't have a Fresh Values card so the cashier had to call for a manager. I got so pissed off I finally let him use mine. While he was paying I hocked a loogie into his salad.

Later while I was loading the beer and sandwiches into my Camaro, I saw Matthew's MSNBC news van get t-boned by Zogby's Pollmobile. Karma's a bitch, Crissy. LOL!

6:10 PM: Finally back at the house. There was a caucus traffic jam on Highway 6 and while I was waiting I saw that the Casey's Store had a special on PBR so I stopped in and snagged a couple of 30s. Fridge is full but I they'll stay cold on the patio deck. On the way out I almost ran over what I thought was a small raccoon, but it turned out to just be Kucinich.

6:18 PM: Tammy is giving me the total stinkeye because the caucus people are showing up late and she want all of them out of the house before Grey's Anatomy. Like it's my fault eVite's default time zone is Pacific. A couple of UAW union guys from Waterloo show up and give me shit about my Yamaha. Hey, if Harley made a dirtbike maybe I'd buy it. I give them some Old Milwaukee which shuts them up. Some Huckabee supporters arrive with a hot dish and an abortion poster.

6:30 PM: The house is starting to fill up and the entry landing is filling up with filthy melting slush from the pile of shoes. Some of these idiots (especially the Mike Gravel people) don't even take off their shoes and tromp crap all over the new carpet we just got from Menards. Joe Biden drops by, supposedly for some "last minute campaigning," but I swear I saw him rifling through the coat pile.

6:42 PM: The Romney and Huckabee people are bitching about the lack of decaf soft drinks, and the Democrats are bitching about the lack of vegan hot dishes. The McCain people want their own room, so I send them to the garage. Holy Christ, I am glad this is only once every four years. I go out to the patio to light up a doob, and get startled by a couple of creepy pie-eyed Ron Paul zombies. "Drug... laws... are... unconstitutional," they moan. *shudder*

6:58 PM: Finally, they're getting started. When I came in from the deck some Romney dude was giving a speech on Massachusetts, and the Olympics, and his awesome hair, and blah, blah, blah. Just then I heard some yelling and clapping from outside the window, and it turned out to be Hugh Hewitt, so I went outside and chased him off with a shovel.

7:07 PM: Oh great. the Democrats are yelling from the basement about a problem. One of the Clinton people choked the bowl on basement commode and it's starting to back up, and they're screaming at me to fix it. I try to plunge it but the fumes are unbearable, so I cut up some Hefty leaf bags and duct tape the toilet door closed to minimize the stench. Looks like it will be a bad night for Hillary too.

7:18 PM: When I get back upstairs Tammy has John Edwards pinned against the wall in a chicken wing hold. "Hey Mister Let's Have a Caucus Party," she sneers, "one of your goddamn guests has been going at my makeup drawer." When she boots him out the front door, I realized I'm probably won't be getting any for a while. I decide to stop drinking beer, and switch to tequila.

7:31 PM: Jesus, what a disaster. The Huckabee people are speaking in tongues and accusing the Romney people of believing in dinosaurs. The McCain people have invited the network news people for their caucus in the garage, and that fucking Tim Russert has his lighting man standing on the hood of Tammy's Civic. I open up the garage door and shut off the garage power at the fuse box, figuring they'll get cold and go away.

7:42 PM: As if things couldn't get any worse, now the Democrats are coming upstairs to use the hall toilet because of the problem in the basement. The environmentalist only use one square of paper, and the others steal entire rolls. None of them wash their hands. I'm headed out on the deck to smoke another doob with the Thompson people, who seem to be the only sane ones here.

7:58 PM: Jeeeeshh. About 5 minutes ago a big black Lincoln stretch pulled up on the lawn and out pops Hillary, along with 15 or 20 of her closest flunkies and footmen. They barge right into the house, without ringing the bell, without so much as a "hey Dave," and head straight down to the basement. Apparently with the plugged up toilet and all the vote was not going real good for her, so she was here for a little last-minute canvasing. Some of the people in her entourage started instructing the caucus people in the basement to vote for her, but they pretty much ignore them. Then Hillary starts screaming at her main flunky, "goddamn it, I told you to make them vote for me!" Normally I'd probably feel bad for the guy, but I'm pretty drunk right now so I kinda laughed. But I laughed harder when Tammy pushed by the security people and grabbed Hillary by the hair and booted her ass out the front door into the driveway snowbank. I probably won't laugh as hard when Tammy does that to me later tonight.

8:15 PM: That was weird. I heard the exhaust fan running in the upstairs bathroom so I went up to turn it off. When I opened the door Barack Obama was in there torching a one-hitter. "Hey man, want a hit?" he goes, with a big grin. I'm pretty toasted already so I said no thanks. "That's cool,' he says. Really seems like a nice guy. So then he shakes out some blow on the counter and offers me a line. "No thanks man," I say. "That's cool," he says. "Y'all Chase the Dragon?" he asks, pulling out a spoon, lighter and some rubber tubing. I declined again. I'm not sure how good a president he will be, but he's certainly a lot better house guest than Hillary.

8:31 PM: Shit, talk about a buzzkill. Down in the living room Huckabee has won the GOP caucus and his salvation freakshow is pouring all my beer down the sink (even the good stuff like MGD), shouting"Praise Jesus!" I yell at them to stop, but they crank some godawful Creed song on the stereo and tell me they're going to perform an exorcism on me. The Democrats are screaming in the basement, apparently because they can't decide on a candidate and how to divy up the shit they stole from my garage and liquor cabinet. I'm too high to figure out what to do.

9:11 PM: All my friends know about Tammy's mean streak, and some of them wonder how I can risk staying around her. Well, sometimes that mean streak comes in handy. Like tonight when she grabbed her .410 and shot it off into the living room ceiling. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," she yelled. "I will thank you to now get the hell off my property."

There was a lot of mumbles and grumbles, but they did all shuffle towards the door. Some Guiliani guy mumbled something about "sensible gun regulations," but Tammy cracked him on the back of the head with the stock of the .410. I laughed pretty hard at that, but then she turned and glared at me. "What are you laughing at, Party Boy? You get the hell out like the rest of them."

Long story short, I'm at Super 8 for the night and my laptop battery's almost dead. So no matter what the pundits and newspapers tell you, the real winner in Iowa tonight just locked me out of the house.

TrackBack

» America's Official Presidential Sniff Tester from Ed Driscoll.com
Who better than Iowahawk himself to educate voters on the important role our nation's 29th state plays in presidential politics:Iowa is a Microcosm of America. A one-day national presidential primary (as some analysts have recommended) would be prohibi... [Read More]

Tracked on January 03, 2008 at 06:16 PM

» Fred Thompson: Shock the World from Stop The ACLU
Im not feeling to bloggy tonight, so Im just gonna throw together a few links related to who Im rootin forFred Thompson. FOX News is frustrating me with their obvious poo poo on Fred, and rah rah for McLame. We will see how t... [Read More]

Tracked on January 03, 2008 at 06:33 PM

» Voting in Iowa from RightWingBob.com
Forget the cable tv. The Hawkeye Cauci are being liveblogged by Dave Burge at his essential Iowahawk journal.
6:18 PM: Tammy is giving me the total stinkeye because the caucus people are showing up late and she want all of them out of t... [Read More]

» Help! The caucusians are winning! from Classical Values
Here are the Iowa results according to Drudge:Obama 36.98; Edwards 30.05; Clinton 29.75 Huckabee 34; Romney 25; Thompson 14 More here If present trends continue, Bill Quick will be proven right -- despite the fact that I wanted him to... [Read More]

Tracked on January 03, 2008 at 09:23 PM

» the Iowa caucus... from Sailinghome
I'm not really following it, but one of the blogs I read has a good poist so I thought I'd let anyone who's interested know... it's based on fictional caucus house party.... Have fun.... [Read More]

» Meaningless caucus finally behind us from Cold Fury
Oooookay, can we all settle down and get to business now? Fredheads, take heart; Beldars mid-December endorsement is perfectly germane:
Even my biggest reservation about Thompson actually reflects well on his political spine: If simply getting e... [Read More]

Tracked on January 04, 2008 at 09:36 AM

» Iowahawk wins Iowa Caucus from This Goes to 11
With the Prick party nomination all but wrapped up, Dave Burge turned his focus to the Republican and Democratic caucuses. Last night he was a caucus host, and he live blogged it: [Read More]

Tracked on January 04, 2008 at 11:24 AM

» The Real Story Behind The Iowahawk Cockus from Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Cover your keyboards monitors in plastic wrap (or finish swallowing those drinks) before you click read Iowahawks live-blogging coverage of this weeks Iowa Cockeye party at his house..
Well give you a sneak-peek, but ... [Read More]

Tracked on January 05, 2008 at 01:20 PM

Comments

Oh man; time to clear outta this joint - the spambots are here.

Hey Hawkster, can I bunk on the floor at the Super 8? My old lady ain't fond of me comin' home all liquored up...

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Enough with the candidates, their supporters and Tammy. When is I-hawk going to resolve the real mystery of the night? We all know he has a stash of PBR, Old Milwaukee and Doobs. But the real question is did he ever take a trip to Little Rhody about four decades ago and bring back several cases of Narragansett Lager Beer (I know they are selling beer under the Gansett name again, but I'm taking about the REAL horse pi$-, er, Gansett). And has he stored them in a basement freezer. And is he bringing some out tonight to celebrate Preacher Huckabee's temporary ascension to the top of the GOP heap.

PoliPundit"nobody – and I mean nobody, in the confines of Al Gore’s greatest invention, the Internet, can slice, dice and julienne a huge chunk of pure snark into so many little jagged pieces like he can"

Charles Murray, The American Enterprise Institute"Out of nowhere—at least I’d never heard of him—comes a posting by one David Burge on his blog, Iowahawk, in which he tore Krugman’s numbers apart. I don’t mean he found some soft spots. I’m talking evisceration. The post has been flying around cyberspace and has a attracted a lot of flak to which Burge has now responded. I recommend both posts as tours de force on two levels. First, they are saturated with the best kind of Internet irreverence and humor—sophomoric occasionally, lmao funny more often. Second, the guy is a hell of an applied statistician. It’s wonderful: Paul Krugman’s got his mile-high New York Times platform, Burge has an obscure blog. And yet, in the world of the Internet, he can take Krugman down and end up letting a whole lot of people know he’s done it."

Hugh Hewitt"For a lesson on how to argue a complex case in the face of MSM stupidity and/or bias --answer with facts, repittion and careful writing laced with laughs-- read the tutorial prepared by Iowahawk... This is how it is done. Airlift Iowahawk to the Speaker's office."

The Lunatic's Asylum"IowaHawk is God. If you're STILL not reading IowaHawk regularly, then you, Sir or Madame, are a dipshit. One that should be taken out and sterilized with the rustiest of farm implements, so that you may not pollute the gene pool with future generations of little dipshits."

Bookworm Room"Every time I read one of Iowahawk’s satires, I think to myself, 'This is it. He cannot get better than this.' And every time I am wrong, as Iowahawk, over and over, publishes something new that is even funnier than his last outing... In a perfect world, Iowahawk would be one of the most recognized comic satirists in America."

Fausta Wertz"the dance floor started to open and exposed a vast deep pool filled with man-eating sharks. The crowd panicked as a couple fell into the waters and the sharks feasted on them. Without missing a step or loosening his embrace, he led me to the entrance and with a swift move managed to both hit the switch that closed the shark pit and concluded the final dance step. He then said, 'It’s late. I must go tend to my blog.'"

Dan Collins, Protein Wisdom"He is Iowahawk of Typepad
Master of the sparkling send-up
When he posts, then douchebags tremble
Realizing they’ve been skewered
And with no recourse to match him:
Mighty Burge, the Iowahawk”

Amused Cynic"perhaps the best-written, cleverest “F*** You” salute that I have ever seen administered ... I am hereby delivering a James Thurber salute to you, Dave, and popping the top on a 16 oz. can of PBR in your direction"

Daniel Ruwe, Right Minds"The funniest person on the Internet. Every one of his posts makes me laugh out loud. Literally incredibly funny. You have to experience him to appreciate him"

Elizabeth Crum"For an idea of what I find brilliant and loveable in terms of sarcasm, satire and the like, see Iowahawk. He is one of our great modern-day scribes: smart, scathing, derisive, outrageous, and funny like few can be"

Jesse Macbeth"I'd like to take the time to address some of the stuff that I read on the Internet written about me... I got to tell you some of the stuff I saw was really funny. One of my favorites ones was actually the Power Rangers one, that was kind of cool."

Jools Krittindan"Then there’s Iowahawk. I don’t even know what he does for a living, something in Iowa, I guess. Yeah, society would function fine without him. It would just suck more. He gets an estate all his own: Iowahawk, the Sixth Estate."

Cherry River Blog"Yes, this is a crude attempt to gain entrance to IH's hallowed blogroll, and maybe even a blurb-out listing, but I still stand in awe of the capaciousness of mind that Mr. Burge has demonstrated to a barely worthy Web world"

Jules Crittenden"I have received no remuneration or consideration of any kind for this shameless fawning boosterism and free advertising. Nor do I require any. To have been in some small way associated with the global Iowahawk phenomenon is more than most of us can aspire to in our miserable, inconsequential little lives. To bask in its electronic glow is to sense the existence of immortality."

Hot Flashes"The man I’d most likely invite to my bedroom in another life"

Jim Henshaw"Neo-cons may not be as humorless as I thought, as this essay from Conservative blogger Iowahawk will attest. Even if you hate his politics, this is funny stuff"

Dave Bender, Israel at Level Ground (Israel)"Iowahawk is in the side of the wrong business, not to mention residing on the wrong landmass; he needs to get over here quick and start pumping out copy for the major news agencies"

Jules Crittendon, Boston Herald"Iowahawk’s wild, unkempt observations may look like they’ve spent the last three days sleeping under a bridge, and be frightening and smelly up close, but they are conduits of fundamental, irrefutable truth. Much like the drunk who accosts you on a streetcorner and unabashedly proclaims, 'I need money for a bottle of Cossack.'"

Twisted Spinster"Iowahawk sticks the knife in so nicely that you don’t even feel it until everything starts to go dark and fuzzy"

Bill Whittle, National Review"My friend Iowahawk writes some of the most brilliant satire I have ever read. He likes to come across as a beer-swilling gearhead — because he is — but look at this ... simply so that I may bask in its reflected glory"

Rush Limbaugh"I've gotta share with you one of the funniest things I have ever read. It is by the blogger Iowahawk. It is one of the sharpest, most cutting, brilliant satires on these pseudo-intellectual conservatives... I've heard of Iowahawk. I don't know what his leanings are, probably lib, I don't know, doesn't matter. This whole thing is just wonderful, it is just hilarious."

Quid Nimis"I think the reason I don't do Iowa Hawk everyday is the same reason I don't eat ice cream everyday: it's too good. That and the fact that I would have to leave my husband and stalk Dave Burge"

Tim Blair, Sydney Telegraph (Australia)"As Sandy Roberts says: 'When you think of Bhutan, you think of archery.' And when you think of Vettes, Ferraris and Hemi-powered rods, you think of Iowahawk and his LA-bound nitroclan"

Joseph Bottum, First Things"I’m on the board of a literary magazine at a small state university, and, at the board’s meeting this spring, the editor mentioned that he had wanted to reprint the blogger Iowahawk’s hilarious swipe at the archbishop of Canterbury... Unfortunately, the editor said, the magazine couldn’t do reprint it. The legal adviser from the university’s administration had said no—not on the grounds that it was offensive to Anglicans and their archbishop, but on the grounds that it mentioned Islam, and the school could receive bomb threats as a result of publishing it."

Lone Star Times"Between cleaning carburetors and restoring classic American cars, Burge churns out some of the funniest and decisively deadly wit and commentary on the web... Write the Pulitzer Committee and demand Iowahawk should win"

Roger Kimball, Pajamas Media"inspired … I was going to say 'parody,' but really it is far too close to the original to be called a parody. Really, it is like the play Hamlet stages to 'catch the conscience of the King,' a dramatic re-enactment of the very crime Claudius had committed but had yet to acknowledge. It worked for Hamlet; will Iowahawk’s performance work for the rest of us? It is too early to tell. But ... it is more truthful, and far more amusing, than anything you’ll read in the [New York] Times."

Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed"I really don't know how best to summarize IowaHawk's you-are-there white-trash treatise... If you crossed Hunter Thompson and Michael Lewis, you might get something this angry and bizarre"

The McMuffins (UK)"Iowahawk and his lovely wife... did not appear to be the psychopathic stalking killers we had been warned about, although that Iowahawk did have a murderous look in his eyes and an unusual amount of froth coming from his mouth"

Blacklake (Hot Air Comments)"I’d say Iowahawk was a genius, but geniuses aren’t generally very clever. Plus, studies have shown that nine out of ten have no idea how to clean a carb. So, statistically speaking, his geniushood is unlikely."

Rand Simberg (Transterrestrial Musings)"Next time Iowahawk beats up on you, just take it. If you try to fight back, it only gets worse. It's like one of those monsters that, the harder you fight it, the stronger it gets, because it actually feeds on your pathetic swats."

Blog Québécois"If Iowahawk ever decides to turn his guns on you, accept your beating with good grace and a rueful chuckle. If you try to fight back, it only gets funnier."

Roger Kimball (The New Criterion)"The excellent weblog IowaHawk summarized some of the thoughts I had... I must also laud David Burge of IowaHawk for his gritty pragmatism. He is no armchair crusader, full of empty imprecations."

Bill Whittle"I've met him, you know -- Iowahawk. 6'7" he is, arms like mighty oak trees, legs like even mightier oak trees: clear grey eyes looking to the far horizon, his lantern jaw set against the approaching storm but yet with a slight hint of a distant smile bourne of many combats won and mortal enemies vanquished.
I stood speechless in his presence at a restaurant in Marina del Rey --- just speechless, weeping silently at the sheer magnetism and force of personality coming off the man in seismic waves; a transcendental, religious experience that kept me awake for a week, as if I had seen the heavens split open in a blaze of orange and purple glory, and all of God's Great Plan revealed.
And when he finally did speak, it was the sound of distant thunder echoing off ancient mountains, a sound that predates mankind's puny schreeching -- a sound that, indeed, is antecedent to the founding of Life on Earth and comes carried through the ether on the shock wave of ancient dying stars. And though he only spoke twelve words during the four hours I stood in his presence, those words are with me still, a perfect dozen seared into my memory, written in gold across the great hall of my mind.
He said, 'HEY, CAN YOU GET THIS ONE? I LEFT MY WALLET AT HOME.'"

Spongeworthy"But no shit, Iowahawk might get up tomorrow, get baked, grab his beautiful wife and ride his moped backwards to a Hells Angel rally, then drink himself into oblivion and fight about 7 crank dealers from the Racine chapter of the Death Jokers all by himself.
Then maybe he'd go home, romance the beautiful wife, build a perfect retro treehouse for his perfect kids, drink a bottle of tequila, prepare a 3-course meal while beating away a push-in home invader and sacrificing him on a makeshift, though historically accurate, Inca altar he built in the woods behind the railroad tracks.
Then he'd sit down and knock out a tremedously insulting Leftist parody that pissed off thread after thread of Kos and DU lunatics, romance the bride once again and fall asleep chuckling.
It's like he's Paul Bunyan and Mark Twain rolled up into one hipster"